Monday, December 31, 2012

You cannot really beat Ron Radosh, who refuses to call Chuck Hagel an anti-Semite but rather takes this route after a column by Pat Buchanan defending the possible defense secretary:

Why is a known anti-Semite like Buchanan endorsing Hagel? Does that tell us anything? What views which Buchanan thinks Hagel holds make Buchanan see him in such a favorable light? Is not this something we should be concerned about?

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Because someone is teaching about the Koran in Zanzibar. This despite millions in U.S. "foreign aid"to Zanzibarian schools. What an outrage that some Zanzabarians do not want American politicians to dictate what is taught to their children. We should nuke 'em (to anticipate Bill O'Reilly's next "talking point").
Source

Saturday, December 29, 2012

The Washington Post wrote in a lead editorial, December 18, that President Obama should not nominate former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel as his Defense Secretary because the President “has available other possible nominees who are considerably closer to the mainstream and to the president’s first-term policies.”
Daily Beast columnist Andrew Sullivan responded to the Post editorial in his best high dudgeon fashion:
“Considerably closer to the mainstream” is not a good thing if the mainstream (including the Washington Post) led us to endless, pointless, fruitless occupations and wars that have deeply wounded American credibility and credit, as well as costing up to a hundred thousand innocent lives. We need less mainstream thought in Washington, not more.
Read the entire article

Friday, December 28, 2012

I’ve no idea how former Nebraska senator and decorated Vietnam War veteran Chuck Hagel became President Obama’s preferred nominee for the job of Secretary of Defense. But when I learned about Hagel’s prospects, I was delighted. A social conservative with a skeptical view of America’s mission to convert the rest of the world to our current version of democracy, Hagel is someone I’ve long admired. Indeed I was hoping his campaign for president would take off four years ago. (Alas, it didn’t.)
For about a week after Hagel’s name surfaced as a possibility for Secretary of Defense, I was also hoping that his nomination would sail through the Senate effortlessly. I no longer think that’s the case. The Log Cabin Republicans yesterday took out a full-page New York Times advertisement to attack Hagel, who once voiced objections to having those who are openly gay serving in the military. He also objected to the muzzling of free speech in what looked like hate speech laws. His opponents have scolded him for being deficient in sensitivity, and in our politically correct democracy that may be the worst possible offense that any mortal could commit.
Read the entire article

Sunday, December 23, 2012

The war against Chuck Hagel to be Defense Secretary continues. Rachel Maddow concludes this short segment, "Sorry, Charlie" on Chuck Hagel's homophobic comment of 14 years ago with the statement, "I do not know if President Obama wants to nominate Chuck Hagel or not. But if he is, so far it's not going all that well."

Friday, December 21, 2012

Behind the scenes, as the primary strategic planner of the bombing campaign for the first Gulf War, Luttwak was a regular in the war room. To the public, he was a ubiquitous presence on cable news and talk shows in the 1990s.

Although more international in his upbringing and perspective — he speaks at least eight languages — Luttwak, 70, is associated with fellow Jewish conservative power players Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen and Norman Podhoretz.

But Luttwak’s opposition to the second Gulf War caused a break in those longtime friendships.

After word leaked from the White House late last week that Chuck Hagel was in line to become the next secretary of defense, Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard manned the Patriot missile batteries to shoot down that trial balloon.

The neoconservative journal, no fan of the iconoclastic former Republican senator, published a smear under the headline: "Senate aide: 'Send us Hagel and we will make sure every American knows he is an anti-Semite.'" In the posting, this anonymous aide accused Hagel of "the worst kind of anti-Semitism there is." As evidence, the article included a quotation from Hagel referring to the "Jewish lobby."

Other right-wing publications and conservative Zionist groups inevitably joined the chorus, including a column by Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal saying Hagel's prejudice has an "especially ripe" odor.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Reports that President Obama may nominate former Senator Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense haven't been well received at The Weekly Standard. In pre-emptively opposing the nomination, the neoconservative magazine is employing what you might call a two-tiered strategy: the low road and the lower road.

The low road is taken by the Standard's editor, Bill Kristol. He writes that Hagel is "anti-Israel," and then follows this assertion with a series of facts that don't corroborate it. Of course, as Kristol surely knows, "anti-Israel" is taken by some people as code for "anti-Semitic." As for those Weekly Standard readers who don't interpret the term that way -- well, that's what the lower road is for. A separate story written by a Standard staffer quotes a top Republican Senate aide saying flat out that Hagel is anti-Semitic.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

The Obama-hating neocon right is trying to Swift Boat the expected nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense by making up a fantasy scare story that Hagel, former U.S. senator from Nebraska, long-respected moderate and thoughtful voice on foreign policy, and decorated Vietnam combat veteran, is "anti-Israel." One would like to be able to dismiss this stuff as the ranting of people for whom no amount of warmongering can ever be too much. But such Swift Boat campaigns have worked in the past, regardless of the facts.

In times like these, don't you wish there were some Washington, D.C.-based Jewish-branded organization, which represented the pro-peace values and interests of the majority of Americans and the majority of American Jews, and which would push back against this kind of nonsense?

Even after the Iraq War disaster and Barack Obama’s election in 2008, neoconservatives retained their influence over U.S. war policies in Afghanistan through their close ties to George W. Bush’s national security holdovers, such as Gen. David Petraeus who partnered with neocon war hawks in escalating the Afghan War.

How tight Petraeus’s relationship was with two neocons in particular, Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, was explored Wednesday in a Washington Post article by war correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran who described how Petraeus installed the husband-and-wife team in U.S. offices in Kabul, granted them top-secret clearances and let them berate military officers about war strategy.

In this month’s issue of Commentary, John Agresto, a self-described neoconservative who served as an adviser to the Iraqi government just after the 2003 invasion, thoughtfullyquestions the idea that the United States should actively and forcefully spread democracy. He identifies the assumptions that lie beneath the idea:

We seemed convinced of two things: First, that democracy is the form of government under which all men are meant to live, and that democracy, unlike autocracy of any kind, is just in itself. Being just, it includes the very essence of ideas of freedom, equality, protection of rights, and toleration. Democracy is natural, democracy is how men achieve just political life and, most surely, democracy means freedom. Second, we constantly gave the impression that democratic government, being natural, is easy. Throw off the tyrant, overturn the ruling class, write a constitution, hold elections, and voila—Democracy.

What is interesting, if not altogether surprising, is the degree to which the “Reading” quoted by Kristol is centered on the U.S. relationship with Israel — more evidence that Israel and its security and welfare stand at the very center of the neo-conservative worldview, a point that is studiously avoided by most of the Washington foreign-policy establishment, at least when its members are speaking or writing publicly. It doesn’t matter what Hagel thinks about China, for example, or about the “pivot” to Asia, or about treatment of wounded vets, or missile defense, or about the appropriate size of the Navy or Marine Corps; it’s all about Israel and the purported threats it faces.

Neo-conservatives and leaders of the powerful Israel lobby are mobilizing their
forces in what looks like an all-out campaign to pre-empt the nomination by
President Barack Obama of an outspoken former Republican senator and decorated
Vietnam War hero to replace Leon Panetta as secretary of defense.

The
campaign was launched last week after senior White House officials leaked word
that Chuck Hagel, who also co-chairs the President's Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board (PFIAB), was
likely to get the nomination whenever, as expected any time, Panetta formally
announces his retirement.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

These Neocon Zionists have totally lost it. Their smear campaigns are outdated and repulsive. They see everything through the prism of race and ideology rather than logic and facts.

If you criticize their policies and views they call you an anti-Semite as if this term has any relevance in the current U.S. foreign policy debate. These idiotic ideologues think that anti-Semites are hiding under every bed in the United States. They need a reality check.

Political conditions have changed. The climate of opinion about the U.S. role in the Middle East and its unconditional support for the extremist government in Israel has changed. But rather than face up to this reality neocons are acting out like little children and screaming “anti-Semite” at their critics. They can’t persuade people why they’re right so they’re shutting down the debate by bullying people into silence. But this isn’t working. They have lost the debate.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

The neocon agenda, PNAC published in 1997, called for regime change in 6 countries by force. Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Lebanon & Jordan.

Iraq was done under GW Bush.

Libya was done by Obama (installing an Islamic Extremist government in the process.)

Syria in progress (the rebels in the Free Syrian Army also contain a high proportion of Islamic Extremists). The rebels are being openly armed by Saudi Arabia. Libyan weapons including shoulder held ground to air missile launchers have found their way into Syria.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Just in case you were wondering if President Barack Obama is any different from, say, “President Mitt Romney” or some hypothetical “President Neocon,” the answer is: Yes. Proof: Syria.

Just take a glimpse at the hysteria of the neoconservatives about what ought to be done in Syria.

To be sure, at the outset there’s this disclaimer: since the start of the Syrian uprising, I’ve been extremely critical of Obama’s actions. When the protests against President Assad were still relatively peaceful and only limited government repression was reported, and when moderate, establishment-leaning (and non-Islamist) opposition figures were beginning to gather steam, Obama jumped the gun and called for Assad’s ouster. That was stupid enough. Since then, though, he’s placated Assad’s external enemies—among them Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who’ve backed Islamism from Tunisia to Afghanistan, and of course Israel—by encouraging, allowing and facilitating the supply of increasingly deadly weapons to the rebels. Some in the Obama administration seem enchanted by the idea that the fall of Assad will deal a huge blow to Iran, even though the United States ought to be fearful of a Sunni-Shiite war in the region that will spark renewed civil war in Iraq and Lebanon. And, of course, OP has seemed unwilling to truly engage Russia (and Iran) in search of a transition in Damascus.

Thursday, December 06, 2012

The neocons pushed the criminal Ahmed Chalabi and his “source” – the Baghdad cab driver known as “curveball” – who stated that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. This fantasy and others were amplified by the New York Times (in particular, journalist Judith Miller) and the establishment media in order to cobble together a consensus for invasion.
A similar effort is now underway in regard to Syria. Warnings about Syrian chemicals weapons coincide with the arrival of Patriot missiles on the Turkey-Syria border as the U.S. and NATO prepare for direct military intervention to unseat al-Assad and replace his government with one that mirrors the one installed in Libya: a factionalized (and thus controllable) government rife with al-Qaeda and fanatical Salafist terrorists.
Read the entire article

Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Senator John McCain has one face for his own ultraconservative party and another face for Susan Rice and the Democrats. It is truly worse category political that one Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice(neoconservatives), could figure in a West Bank – Hamas war to roll back a legitimate democratic election without causing Senator John McCain’s mind to go into “trouble” mode while another Rice(Susan) may have guessed wrong on something that American deaths were involved in.

McCain’s party caused the deaths of 6,000 American soldiers, in an attack on Iraq, based on a neocon lie about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Senator McCain’s mind wasn’t troubled. Using America’s resources to, without authorization of America’s Congress, grab another country’s oil and give it to commercial interests did not publically trouble Senator McCain’s neocon face.
Read the entire article

Amid the media frenzy over former CIA director David Petraeus’ extramarital affair, we were struck by a quick reference in a Washington Post story about Petraeus’ time running the war in Afghanistan:

Prominent members of conservative, Washington-based defense think tanks were given permanent office space at his headquarters and access to military aircraft to tour the battlefield. They provided advice to field commanders that sometimes conflicted with orders the commanders were getting from their immediate bosses.

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"Conservatives are accustomed to liberals not understanding the zoology of our movement. But the use and abuse of the term 'neoconservative' has exceeded even the high allowance for cliché and ignorance generally afforded to those who write or talk about conservatism from outside the conservative ant farm. In fact, neoconservative has become a Trojan Horse for vast arsenal of ideological attacks and insinuations. For some it means Jewish conservative. For others it means hawk. A few still think it means squishy conservative or ex-liberal. And a few don't even know what the word means, they just think it makes them sound knowledgeable when they use it."